Problema Solution
In a school election, Jan received 160 more votes than Julie, and James received twice as many as
John. If a total of 440 votes were cast, how many votes did each person receive?
Answer provided by our tutors
The word problem is ambiguous... we assume that 'Jan' is a reference to 'John', otherwise the problem is incomplete.
Let 'x' represent the number of votes for Julie, then 'x+160' represents the number of votes for John(or Jan) and '2(x+160)' represents the number of votes for James:
440=x+(x+160)+2(x+160)
x=-10
Yea, so the problem statement has errors and is not entered consistent. If Jan and John are two different people then something needs to indicate how many votes were cast for John.